


Hitting a weak point

by CannibaLilly



Series: Physiological Differences [7]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Massage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 16:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1232941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CannibaLilly/pseuds/CannibaLilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of one-shots about the differences in human and Time Lord physiology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hitting a weak point

**Author's Note:**

> This will make more sense once you've read the first Parts of this series!
> 
> The website wasn’t too clear about the circumstances I needed, so I went on and made stuff up. If anybody’s read the prose which mentions all this and discovers contradictions: sorry! Enjoy though ;)

Donna was surprised how relaxed she felt. The bright sun gently woke her up after a short night, but she hadn’t missed its warmth much, since the Doctor had taken good care of her body temperature.  
She yawned amply. It was the second morning in a row that she woke up huddled against her Martian.  
Speaking of which, he seemed to have dozed off, too. She found him with closed eyes and a little frown on his face, sleeping. He almost looked as if he was struggling to remember something, his sleep didn’t seem very comfortable.

“Hey, wake up,” Donna gently shook the Doctor.  
He mumbled something Donna couldn’t quite hear and opened his eyes just a crack.  
“Wow, you look terrible,” she mumbled, eyeing up the dark circles around his eyes.  
“Right and a good morning to you, too,” he grumbled and sat up so Donna had to let go of him. Wincing, the Doctor stopped his move midway.  
“Ah, no, not moving that part of my back again,” he moaned and remained in this semi-sitting position. Donna grinned.  
“Are you stuck?”  
“Very funny. I just need to be a bit more careful.”

Apparently trying to treat his back with care, the Doctor performed a complicated looking roll to his side and then somehow managed to push himself up onto his legs. All in all he resembled a very clumsy little tortoise.  
“Hah!” he proudly look down at Donna who was still sitting on the cave ground.  
“That,” she stated, “was pitiable,” and then stood up matter-of-factly.  
“My back hurts,” he griped. “At least I didn’t have a soft Time Lord to sleep on, everything I had was the stone wall.”  
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re all getting older,” Donna mocked.  
“I’m not old!” he pressed his hands in his back to check where exactly the pain came from. Judging by his expression, it came from everywhere.  
“No, you are ancient,” she pointed out.  
“Not in Time Lord years!” he replied huffed. “For a Time Lord I’m young, really really young.”  
“Didn’t you say this is your… 10th version?” Donna asked.  
“Well it is, but they wear out quickly!”  
“Sure they do, you’re not really treating them with care, are you?”  
“I am a traveller! I save whole galaxies! Of course I get hurt now and then,” he remarked.  
“I wasn’t talking about the adventures. What I was talking about were all your little carelessnesses. Last week for example. You were fixing the TARDIS’s circuits after showering. You were dripping wet! She almost barbecued you if not for her caution.”  
“What I was trying to say is that I’m not old,” the Doctor reminded her and carefully avoided talking about this incident again. “If my back hurts then it’s because I spent the night leaning against a cave wall.”

Donna rolled her eyes and gave up with a shrug, smiling though. Her mood was far too good to argue with a grumpy Doctor about something like that. Instead she grabbed the bag with her towels and the sunscreen and, because she felt generous, even gave in to the Doctor’s tormented look and carried his bag as well.

 

x-x-x-x-x-x

 

“I probably just pinched a nerve,” the Doctor mused as they entered the TARDIS. Donna had lost her good mood somewhere on the way whilst the Doctor kept rambling about why his sore back and his headache were no signs for his age but the uncomfortable sleeping position.  
“If you think so,” she mumbled and dropped the bags next to the control panel. At least they were back in the TARDIS. Donna felt a strange kind of relief because of this thought. The old girl really had become her home.  
“I need to get changed and take a shower before we go anywhere new,” she announced. “How about you?”  
“No, thanks. I’m in the med-bay if you need me. I think I bought a tool against trapped nerves a few centuries ago,” the Doctor replied and vanished in the depth of the TARDIS.

Donna sighed and entered the kitchen. To her mind, his little aches and pains were due to his ginger-beer-bender and the fact that he hadn’t cured his hangover properly.  
Well, she was to blame for the latter after all.

Donna put the kettle on and vanished into her room to get changed.  
She got out of her dress and the swim suit she hadn’t been able to use and, together with the fluffy winter coat that had probably saved her life, put them in the clothes-basket.  
The memory of the last day was still clear in her mind, but she couldn’t quite wrap her head around it.  
What were they doing? They were friends and certainly the Doctor had no intention of changing that! At the same time it felt so right being close to her Martian in that way that Donna hardly cared about any downsides at the moment.  
In the end it didn’t matter. She didn’t want to stew over details. Why shouldn’t they enjoy themselves a little? As long a no-one got emotionally attached, they would be fine.

The kettle made itself heard and snapped Donna out of her brooding. Quickly she slipped a comfortable jersey dress on and scurried into the kitchen before the kettle could boil over.  
The last thing she wanted was anything here to boil over and get things messy.

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

Some time later, when the Doctor still hadn’t returned, Donna decided she could just as well go looking for him. He’d told her that he would be in the med-bay to fix his back, so when Donna pushed the white door open she expected a lot, but not to find the Doctor lying topless on a bed. He held a weird looking kind of stick in his hand that remotely resembled a fishing rod, only that, instead of a line, this thing ended in a thin metal stick with a small ball on top.

“What are you doing there?” Donna asked with a frown. She didn’t trust medical instruments, especially those she’d never seen before and that were clearly alien.  
“Sorry to make you wait,” he replied. “I haven’t used this in ages.”  
Donna’s frown only deepened.  
“What could this space rod do about your pinched nerves?”  
“See this orb at the tip of it?” he asked in full, albeit sore, teacher-mode. “I can control it from here and apply pressure to areas I usually couldn’t reach, like my back.”  
Donna suspiciously eyed the metal ball up. Until now, it was only uselessly swinging back and forth on the thin metal arm.

“…Well?” she asked expectantly.  
“Err, the control seems to be a bit… reluctant today,” the Doctor admitted and pressed a button on the remote without any visual result.  
“Maybe the battery is flat?”  
“It doesn’t need batteries.” He pressed a few other buttons; in vain.  
“It’s basically a massage-thing, right?” Donna asked. “Why don’t we just stop by a spa? Have a day off and let an eight-armed masseuse fix you up. Oh, and don’t mind me, I’m sure I could kill the time in an outer space luxury spa.”  
“I don’t need any ‘fixing-up’,” he objected somewhat grumpily. “I am injured, not sore. What I need is medical treatment not a,” he twisted his mouth dismissively “spa.”  
Donna rolled her eyes.  
“It’s probably just a hangover and you’re making such fuss about it.”  
“I had hangovers before,” he snapped. “It never felt that horrible!”  
“How many centuries ago was that, huh, sunshine? I keep telling you, we all grow older and start reacting more… sensitive to things we didn’t mind years ago.”  
“I am not growing older,” he growled and pressed another button on the remote. “I am… _maturing_ , that’s a difference!” Annoyed he tossed the gadget back into a big box next to the bed. The alien rod vanished inside it with a sullen clonk, and the Doctor crossed his arms and rested his chin upon them.

Donna shook her head. Who’d thought that to such an ancient bloke “age” mattered so much.  
Come to think of it, Donna knew he was 900-and-something but she had no idea what this was in human-years. 30? 40? Younger? Older? As far as she knew, blokes usually got queasy about their age when they came by their mid-thirties, but who knew if this held true for her Martian, too.  
“I still think your bender’s to blame for your headache,” Donna told him, but, in a fit of sympathy, she added: “of course a pinched nerve could add up to the pain and make it worse. Let me have a look at it.”  
Surprised by that, the Doctor raised his head.  
He watched her approach, with a careful curiosity in his look as if he expected she would pull his leg.  
“What are you doing?” he asked suspiciously.  
“’Applying pressure to areas you can’t reach’,” Donna repeated.  
“Right… okay,” he kept his eyes on her until she was right behind him so he had no other option as to rest his head back on his arms.

“Just tell me where it hurts the most.”  
Donna knew she couldn’t replace a proper masseuse, but she had often helped her gramps when his back was sore after another day he spent crouched down on that hill.  
“It’s the upper back I reckon,” he told her, facing the opposite wall. “Somewhere on the left side.”  
“Just tell me where to stop.” Donna slowly trailed her middle and index finger up his spine and tried to get a feeling for his body. After all the things she’d learned about Time Lords, who knew how different their backs were?  
His skin felt cool, but Donna was sure the lower core temperature he’d mentioned was to blame. Or he was simply feeling cold, that would explain the shiver that followed her touch.

Then he suddenly winced. “Ouch! There it is.”  
“Oh, come on, I’ve hardly touched you, it can’t have hurt that badly,” she scolded and carefully started kneading his back.  
“It hurt pretty badly!” he objected as Donna worked her way up his left shoulder.  
“D-Donna, be careful there,” he warned and she smiled about so much sensitivity.  
“I won’t break you, don’t worry.”  
She had just found something that felt like a knot under his skin. Maybe he was right after all and he’d really pinched a nerve.  
“No, seriously! There’s a nerve cluster you better spa-“ Before he could finish his warning Donna applied just a little bit of pressure on his back and his whole body went stiff under her touch. Then he collapsed on the bed.

Donna gasped and backed off, completely taken aback by this reaction. She had hardly done anything! He was clearly fooling her for not taking him seriously enough.  
“Haha, very funny, Spaceman,” she remarked. “I got it now, I’m not gonna touch you there again, _stop that now_.” The last part came out slightly squeakier than she’d intended it to.  
“Spaceman?” she asked after a few moments of silence. She poked him at first and then softly shook his shoulder as if trying to wake him up. “Doctor? Doctor!?”  
Panic chocked her as she reached for his wrist with trembling fingers. Donna felt the two pulses throbbing against her fingers in a steady rhythm and let out a relieved breathe. Thank God, he was alive, she hadn’t killed him.  
Tears of relieve and at the same time fear sprang to her eyes.  
 _What do I do now? What’s wrong with him?_

A feeling as if someone was breathing down her neck made Donna jump up. It was the TARDIS, nudging at her mind.  
“What should I do?” she asked the ceiling aloud even though it was probably unnecessary. The TARDIS could hear the Doctor’s thoughts, Donna knew that much, but their communication was still quite unstable.  
As a reply the ship around her hummed soothingly.  
“So he’s not dying, is he?! I can help him?”  
No reply. Donna frowned.  
“I… can’t help?”  
A low buzz that either meant “yes” or “sorry”.  
“But there has to be _something_ I can do! I- I don’t even know what’s happened! He just fainted and-” Donna fell quiet because her voice wasn’t obeying her anyway; she just ended up sounding hysterical.

She tried to recall what he’d said to her. Something about a cluster, whatever that meant.  
She threw a worried glance at the unconscious Martian, half-heartedly thinking about going back to find out what she had touched there that had caused this reaction, but after what’d just happened… She didn’t want to risk making it any worse.  
Instead she went to search the boxes and shelves until she found a blanket, probably one for shocks or colds, and tucked him in it. At least that would keep him warm.  
Then she curled herself up on a chair next to the bed and waited.

 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

 

It was about three hours later, when somewhere in the Doctor’s brain two synapses decided it was safe to resume their work, because the attack and therefor any possible danger was over.  
He had some very careful synapses.  
A stir went through his whole body and a frown flashed over his face. Only then his consciousness actually started returning to him. That was why, when his eyes fluttered open, his companion had already appeared at his side and gently stroked her hand over his head. This was not the worst thing to wake up to.

“-omise I’ll listen to you from now on. I just thought you were making a fuss,” was what he caught of her words, it was enough to make him smile. As if she would _ever_ listen to him.  
“’s okay,” he mumbled with a heavy tongue and blinked at the bright light of the med bay until he could see Donna properly. Slowly his senses started working again, just his muscles refused to move, yet.  
“Are you okay, do you need anything?” Donna asked, crouching down so he could look at her face and not just her… well, it was nice to see her face, even though it was tensed up in worry.  
“I’m alright,” he said. “I just need a moment to boot up properly.”  
“’Boot up’? Sounds like you’re starting a computer,” she replied, keeping her voice soft. He knew he must look pitiful, otherwise she would have mocked him for that expression.  
“There’s not much difference. You could say you hit the emergency shut-down earlier.”  
He tried to sit up, but his body was still paralysed. Then he would just have to lie there and let Donna pet his head… He believed he would survive that.

Out of the blue, Donna reached her hand out and wiped something from his jaw.  
“You’re drooling,” she told him, trying not to sound amused, but failed. The Doctor felt his face burning. Glorious. He hated when different parts of him woke up at a different pace.  
“Sorry,” he said, trying to sound as dignified as possible with drool on his chin.  
Donna shook her head understandingly and got up to fetched a tissue for him.  
At least his mouth was working at all, so he returned to explaining all this to Donna, maybe he could talk the embarrassment away.  
“You see, Time Lords have this cluster where most of our nerves intersect. It allows us to control pretty much everything that happens in our body, but it’s vulnerable for pressure so it can disable us when hit in the wrong way.”

Donna returned into his sight and shocked recognised that she was crying. And he was lying on this bed, unable to do much about it.  
“I’m really sorry about it,” she sniffled. “I didn’t want to hurt you, I had no idea something like that could happen and then you fainted and-“  
“Of course you didn’t know it, how could you? Don’t worry about it,” he tried to soothed her.  
 _Come on, body, wake up! She needs a hug_.  
At least a tickle in his arm told him he could reach out for her. Clumsily he took her hand and squeezed it gently.  
“See? I’m just fine, please don’t worry.”  
Donna hiccoughed with a sob. How long had she been sitting there, worrying, he wondered. 

“Why are you not angry?” she wanted to know. “I nearly killed you and you keep soothing me.” She sounded almost reproachful.  
“You didn’t kill me, not even nearly,” he told her. “You made me take a nap. A- well, a surprise nap that I didn’t want to take, but that’s nap after all.”  
“Daft, Martian,” Donna said but her expression brightened up a little. She leaned down to press a kiss to his mouth. The Doctor felt a heat flashing through his body that cast out what was still left of the paralysis.  
Too fast she stood up again and chuckling wiped the tissue over his lips. Right, he was drooling, he’d forgotten about that.  
“That was nice and a tiny bit disgusting,” she informed him grinning.  
“Yup, that’s my thing,” he replied and wearily sat up on the bed.  
“It’s our thing,” Donna corrected and the smile she passed him almost managed to knock the Doctor over again. What was it about her that made him feel like that?

“I’ll wait outside until you’re decently dressed and then I want to see you heading for bed,” Donna said before the Doctor had gathered himself. “You need to sleep this off properly, do you hear me?”  
He just nodded his head and waited until Donna had left the room then he dug his fingers into his hair.  
He was really a daft Martian after all. When had he started feeling like that for Donna?! And why now?! It would destroy everything they had, it was just this kind of feeling that made everything difficult.  
Bugger! The Doctor threw a look over to the door. Just when everything had been working fine he had to fall in love with Donna. What was he supposed to do now? He couldn’t keep on pretending just to be her friend and kiss her when he felt so much more…  
No! He had to stop that. No further kissing and touching until he had brought his feelings back under control. Angry with himself he got up from the bed. Donna was right, his carelessnesses would get him killed one day.


End file.
